Arthur Miller has chosen to tell the story of the Salem witch
trials from the point of view of one of its victims, John Proctor.
This personalizes the story for us; by the end we know Proctor
better than anyone else in the play, and we feel his suffering all
the more intensely because we care about him. We also come to
understand what happens by following and sharing Proctor's
struggle to understand it himself.

Proctor is an extremely attractive character. He is as good and
honest as we ourselves would like to be, and yet he's not perfect.
His mistakes are those of a human being, not a superman. By
concentrating the action of the play on John Proctor, Arthur
Miller makes it easy for us not only to sympathize, but also to
identify with him and the other victims of the witch-hunt: we
find out what it would feel like to be caught up in such madness.